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North Korea's Kim Jong Un Spends Most Of His Time Eating Cheese And Plotting Against The WestBY ELEANOR ROSS ON 6/26/17 AT 11:36 AMhttp://www.newsweek.com/

When Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea, isn’t busy setting off missiles and laughing gleefully at cameras, his day-to-day life is more mundane than might be expected.

North Korea is on everybody’s lips in 2017 after no fewer than 10 missile launches this year, some of which skirted dangerously close to other countries—including one in March that landed just 186 miles off the coast of Japan.

Across Asia and in the wider world, the concern is that Pyongyang will attach a nuclear warhead onto a long-distance missile—something North Korea claims to be able to do (even if it has not been independently verified). North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) may even be able to reach Alaska, which has prompted the United States to step up pressure on its only ally, China, to either increase sanctions against Pyongyang or be sanctioned itself.

The case of Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old who was sent back from North Korea after spending a year in prison in a coma and who died upon his return to the U.S., has radically increased tension between President Donald Trump and Pyongyang. Trump called Kim Jong Un “irrational”; in return, North Korea’s state media said Trump was a "psychopath."

When he isn't sparring with Donald Trump or supervising missile launches, how does Kim Jong Un spend his week?

Kim Jong Un usually appears in photographs surrounded by adoring children, the military or his advisers, but is rarely seen with his wife. Ri Sol-ju, 27, married Kim in 2009. Very little is known about her; experts debate the date of her birth. It’s not known if Ri Sol-ju is even her real name.

Her family is from the political elite, and she is believed to have a Ph.D. in science. There has been much speculation about Ri in foreign media. Some say she is actually singer Hyon Song-wol, famous for tunes including “Excellent Horse-Like Lady,” and that the North Korean propaganda machine is simply trying to hush up her past.

Aiden Foster-Carter, an expert on North Korea and honorary senior research fellow in Sociology and Modern Korea at Leeds University, attributes the secrecy around Kim Jong Un to life in North Korea being on a “need-to-know basis.” “We’ve actually seen his [Kim Jong Un’s] wife more than Kim Jong Il [his father] because he had a very complicated love life,” explains Foster-Carter.

It’s believed Kim Jong Un has a daughter, born in 2012, called Kim Ju-rae, but little is known about the child. In 2013, NBA star Dennis Rodman returned from North Koreaand confirmed that Kim Jong Un has a baby girl, but if she exists she has not yet been formally introduced to the nation. North Korean tradition holds that the children of leaders are not to be introduced formally until they are adults, which was the case for both Kim Sung Il and Kim Jong Un, explains Foster-Carter.

The Ryongsang Residence, known by locals as “Central Luxury Mansion,” is in Pyongyang, and is huge: 4.6 square miles.

Facilities at the palace include an Olympic-sized swimming pool, banquet facilities, a running track and athletics field, a shooting range and stables. Satellite images show the house also has a giant waterslide.

But Kim has plenty of alternatives to the Ryongsang palace, should he wish to leave the capital.

In 2013, Kim Jong Un chartered a $7 million, 95-foot luxury yacht around the North Korean coastline during a tour. He also calls a palatial complex on the coast near Wonsan his home. Rodman described Kim’s life in Wonsan as a “seven-star party,” and that it's like going to “visit Hawaii except [Kim] is the only one there.”

Foster-Carter tells Newsweek, “You certainly couldn’t describe him as a workaholic like his father, so I imagine he spends more of his time relaxing rather than being in the center of politics.”